Agreed!!!
Dave Kerr
Dave.kerr@xxxxxxxxx
780-499-0069
On Jun 12, 2022, at 10:48 AM, Willow Arune <walittleboots9@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Yes, Jim. That they would authorize deployment of this app is wriong.
Willow
On Sun, Jun 12, 2022 at 7:56 AM Jim Mann <jimmann@xxxxxxx> wrote:--
I don’t normally respond to “stuff” like this but it is horrible.
What is “horrible” is that some senior management/executives at Tim Hortons
approved the information technology project that delivered code that had the
capability to track unsuspecting customers 24 hours a day. What are the
ethics of individuals that would countenance this? One must assume that the
management/executives that authorized this are educated intelligent people
(they rose to senior positions in Tim Hortons) and this is their level of
common sense and integrity that they could possibly reach the conclusion
that this is acceptable conduct.
What is “horrible” is that I doubt the vast majority of people that
downloaded the Tim Horton’s app likely did NOTHING when this egregious
breach of personal privacy was detected. Obviously there are no factual
statistics but I would be that very few, if any, people that had this app on
their phone have expressed their disapproval to Tim Hortons or have decided
to no longer give Tim Hortons their business. Have we become so numb to
unethical activity and breaches of our privacy that we just shake our heads
and move on. This is UNACCEPTABLE conduct by Tim Hortons.
It truly is HORRIBLE on many many levels.
jim
From: dsp-ea-general-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<dsp-ea-general-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Willow Arune
Sent: June 11, 2022 11:17 AM
To: dsp-ea-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Horrible!
June 11, 2022
‘A Mass Invasion of Privacy’ but No Penalties for Tim Hortons
By Ian Austen
One way to figure out how deeply Tim Hortons is woven into Canada’s fabric
is a cross-border comparison. If McDonald’s, perhaps its closest analogue in
the United States, wanted to have the same per capita reach in that market
as Tim Hortons boasts in Canada, it would have to roughly triple its
13,000-plusAmerican outlets.
“What happened in Tim Hortons is also happening elsewhere,” Daniel Therrien,
the federal privacy commissioner, said.Ian Austen/The New York Times
Despite being foreign owned since 2014, Tim Hortons still waves the Canadian
flag as vigorously as it can. But last week, a scathing report by the
federal privacy commissioner and three of his provincial counterparts laid
out in great detail how Tim Hortons ignored a wide array of laws to spy on
Canadians, creating “a mass invasion of Canadians’ privacy.”
“As a society, we would not accept it if the government wanted to track our
movements every few minutes of every day,” the federal privacy commissioner,
Daniel Therrien, said in his last official news conference. “It is equally
unacceptable that private companies think so little of our privacy and
freedom that they can initiate these activities without giving it more than
a moment’s thought.”
The vector for Tim Hortons’ large-scale snooping, according to the report,
was its mobile phone app, which was downloaded 10 million times in the three
years following its introduction in 2017. At first, the app had typical
retail functions involving payment, loyalty points and placing orders.
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But the privacy commissioners found that in 2019, Tim Hortons slipped in a
new feature. With the help of Radar, a geolocation software company based in
the United States, it turned the GPS systems in customers’ phones into a
corporate snooping tool. Many apps, of course, ask users for permission to
access their phones’ GPS while they’re actively using the apps for
potentially useful features like locating the nearest outlet of a store,
bank or restaurant.
The Tim Hortons app, however, went far beyond that, tracking users around
the clock anywhere in the world — even when the app was closed. It recorded
not only their geographic location, but whether that location was a house,
factory or office and even, in many cases, the name of the building they
were in. It even, according to the report, recorded whether they were
popping into rival coffee shops. The continuous tracking took place despite
users being told that they would only be tracked while using the app.
Originally, the report found, Tim Hortons intended that the system would
track individuals to send them specific promotions, like coupons for a Tim
Hortons stand if they were, say, at an arena for a hockey game. It dropped
that plan to monitor individuals but did use the data, in an aggregated
form, to look for patterns and changes in where and when Canadians picked up
their double-doubles.
The report goes on to detail a wide range of other deficiencies, like
inadequate protection of the data the app was harvesting, and deceptions in
privacy statements.
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The tracking system was only shut down in June 2020 after the joint privacy
investigation began. It was prompted by an article in The National Post by
James McLeod, who discovered that the app was constantly documenting his
whereabouts, even when he was overseas on vacation.
When the report was released, Mr. Therrien and the other privacy
commissioners made it clear that Tim Hortons had breached the privacy of
Canadians to an extraordinary extent.
“Geolocation data is incredibly sensitive because it paints such a detailed
and revealing picture of our lives,” he said, adding that “the risks related
to the collection and use of location information remain high, even when
‘de-identified,’ as it can often be re-identified with relative ease.”
While there are some class actions against Tim Hortons underway, the company
has not been fined or penalized under federal or provincial privacy laws.
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The Tim Hortons app recorded its users’ movements.Ian Austen/The New York
Times
The app remains available for download on both iPhones and Android phones.
(I asked Apple and Google if the tracking software violated their app store
policies or if they had taken any action against Tim Hortons. Neither
company got back to me.)
In an email, Tim Hortons said that it began its own privacy review in 2020
and is implementing all of the recommendations in the privacy commission’s
report.
“We’ve strengthened our internal team that’s dedicated to enhancing best
practices when it comes to privacy and we’re continuing to focus on ensuring
that guests can make informed decisions about their data when using our
app,” the company said.
Mr. Therrien and outside experts have long argued that Canada’s privacy
laws, or its system for enforcing them, are in need of substantial revision.
It took a journalist to discover what Tim Hortons was doing, the official
investigation dragged on for nearly two years and, ultimately, there were no
penalties. Only Quebec’s privacy office currently has the power to impose
fines, but the maximum penalty it could have imposed on Tim Hortons, whose
corporate parent had sales of $2 billion in 2020, is 10,000 Canadian dollars.
“The laws have no teeth,” Jill Clayton, the information and privacy
commissioner for Alberta, told the news conference.
Mr. Therrien said that the Tim Hortons case is not an isolated example —
it’s just the one that was exposed.
“It is clear that what happened in Tim Hortons is also happening elsewhere
in the collection-of-information ecosystem,” he said. “Are there sufficient
safeguards? Clearly not.”
--
Willow
I learn a little every day, most of which I forget the day after...
Willow
I learn a little every day, most of which I forget the day after...
